Welcome

Robert Meeropol is the younger son of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. In 1953, when he was six years old, the United States Government executed his parents for “conspiring to steal the secret of the atomic bomb.”

For over 40 years he has been a progressive activist, author and public speaker. In the 1970’s he and his brother, Michael, successfully sued the FBI and CIA to force the release of 300,000 previously secret documents about their parents. He earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in Anthropology from the University of Michigan, graduated law school in 1985, and was admitted to the Massachusetts Bar.

In 1990, after leaving private practice, Robert founded the Rosenberg Fund for Children. The RFC is a public foundation that provides for the educational and emotional needs of children in this country whose parents have been harassed, injured, jailed, lost jobs or died in the course of their progressive activities. The Fund also supports youth who have been targeted for their own activism. In its more than two decades, the RFC has awarded almost $6 million in grants to benefit more than a thousand children. In September 2013, Robert retired as Executive Director, passing the leadership of the foundation to his daughter Jennifer Ethel Meeropol. Robert continues to serve on the RFC Board of Directors and as a capital campaign fundraiser for the organization.

Robert has long been involved in anti-capital punishment activism, locally and internationally. He is interested in, and blogs about, issues of national security and civil liberties, and in understanding the connections between global warming, the evolution of human societies, and political activism.

He lives in Western Massachusetts with his wife, the author Ellen Meeropol, and their cats Coreopsis and Lupine (aka Cory & Loopy).

Selected Works

Memoir

"Bravery is rare. Tyranny is commonplace. Both define the life of Robert Meeropol, son of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. In his heart-wrenching, honest memoir, Meeropol recounts the emotional terrors of his childhood, the kindness of Abel and Anne Meeropol-who adopted him and his older brother after their parents' execution-his struggle to vindicate his parents, and his own political activism, culminating in the creation of the Rosenberg Fund for Children, which he now directs."